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Monday, 4 July 2016

Jeremy Corbyn's EU views could have been an advantage to Labour

One of the most irritating rote learned tabloidisms about Jeremy Corbyn is the idea that it's some kind of defect of his that he spent years criticising the EU, but then eventually decided to support the case for Remain.

It's easy to see how simple-minded people can be led to the conclusion that Jeremy Corbyn must be some kind of stinking hypocrite to have gone from being an EU critic to arguing the case for the UK to Remain, because it would look an awful lot like a hypocritical U-turn to anyone who is only capable of thinking in absolutist black and white terms.Like me Jeremy Corbyn spent years expressing criticisms and doubts about the EU but when it came to the EU referendum ,he clearly had more doubts about the policy of bailing out of the EU without a plan for what comes next, so he sided with Remain.

I thought he argued a difficult case brilliantly. He didn't pick one side and argue the case from an absolutist perspective using every propaganda tool in the political armoury like the majority of politicians did. He was actually one of the only ones who tried to speak to the public like we're adults, rather than a bunch of sub-juvenile halfwits who can be goaded into supporting one side or another with fearmongering, threats, false promises, appeals to anti-intellectualism or outright lies.Corbyn was one of the only politicians who treated the referendum debate as if it was a serious issue worthy of rational debate, rather than a way to give David Cameron a slapping, to get rid of all the "nasty" foreigners, the trigger for economic Armageddon or any of the other the absolute rubbish the majority of politicians on both sides of the debate came out with.

Despite his history of criticising the EU, Jeremy Corbyn's decision to argue for Remain out of recognition that a haphazard bailout with no plan for what comes next could be a disastrous decision in comparison to staying in and trying to reform the EU from the inside is not actually a "defect" at all. In fact the ability to see the debate from both sides could have been a massive advantage for Labour had they played their cards right instead of opting for collective suicide via their ludicrous pre-planned "chicken coup".It should have been as clear as day that a man who demonstrated that could see and understand the rational arguments on both sides of the debate (rather than having argued an absolutist black and white case like practically every other politician in the country) would actually have been an ideal leader to unify the nation after such a divisive campaign. However the 172 backstabbing Labour MPs seem to have ruined that chance completely by supporting the ludicrously timed and incompetently executed Blairite coup attempt against him that they'd been planning since the day he was elected leader of the Labour Party.

Whether Jeremy Corbyn can survive the bombardment of criticism from the mainstream media and the Westminster establishment for daring to actually offer rational analysis during the EU referendum debate instead of crude manipulative propaganda is debatable. It seems pretty unlikely at the moment. However what is certain is that a great number of people will remember that Corbyn was one of the only politicians to try to argue the debate fairly and rationally, rather than playing on our fears or offering ludicrous false promises, which far from being a defect, was a demonstration of his integrity.

It's quite incredible that the Labour Party used what could have been Jeremy Corbyn's great unifying strength (the ability to see both sides of the EU debate and speak honestly about it) as their supposed reason to depose him. It just goes to show how completely out-of-touch with reality they were due to their ridiculous obsession with throwing their party into chaos by ousting their democratically elected leader, just when the country needed a unified opposition to hard-right Tory extremism more than ever.

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